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kuriousity wrote:

I'm always surprised to see so much negativity towards GONZO shows - I always associate the name with the cream of the crop when it comes to anime. Maybe I've just been lucky to get all the gems over the years, to no complaints from me though - great stuff! Good to see them making some profit and working on new projects.

They were a popular punching bag. The honor seems to have shifted to Studio DEEN now.

Anyway, Gonzo haters are as varied as they come. Some despise them for not paying enough attention to the otaku market. Others think they ruin adaptations.

Still others criticize the production values. The assertion that even the most acclaimed Gonzo anime are cheaply made, or are plagued by an abundance of off-model art have always confused me.

Sure, Gonzo takes some obvious animation shortcuts and their bad shows are indeed bad, but I've always found their top billed series to be strong. They have good post-production processing, acceptable frame counts, and lots of motion. Funky CG aside, Gonzo does utilize a looser drawing style (perhaps a time saving strategy to keep the animation smooth and varied), but I feel that the results are technically sound.

Problem with Gonzo is that they find it very hard to deliver. Last Exile and Gankutsuou were absolutely spot on, and they just lost it from then on. It was when they started harem pandering and objectively bad shows such as Dragonaut that nails were in the coffin.

Shangri-La had the potential to be one of the best anime for a long, long time, but they just dropped the ball somehow. I liked it but it was frustratingly unable to meet its potential until the very end (Ryoko is one of my most favourite villians in a long time)
But then when they make decisions to do stuff like drop Kenichi Yoshida's designs, even for Murata, what can you expect?

I have a soft spot for Gonzo since the anime that really got me into the anime fandom was Romeo x Juliet and I still think it was a really good show. So I'm happy to see them back, let's just hope for fewer good shows than a lot of so-so ones.

I'm glad to see they're making a comeback, partially because I'll take pretty much any good news in the anime industry. That being said, I sort of have a love/hate relationship with Gonzo. On one hand, there's some series I can't deny the quality of (Gankutsuou and Romeo x Juliet, for example) and I really, really liked the first season of Kaleido Star (although I give at least some of the credit for that to Junichi Sato). On the other hand, as a fan of the manga Chrono Crusade was a huge disappointment, and even though I consider Welcome to the NHK one of my favorite shows, there's some episodes where the animation is so bad it has to be seen to be believed. And while their version of Full Metal Panic was decent, I think the series going over to KyoAni was one of the best things to happen to that franchise.

So yeah, they're not all bad, they've done some good work...but they've had a ton of missteps, too.

egoist wrote:

6Hokage wrote:

Eww, Gonzo - the only studio without single good show ever made. How is it they still around?

Of what I've seen, I would give the following titles 7+/10; which, by ANN's rating system, is considered good... median ratings also agree with me.
Full Metal Panic!, Saikano, Kaleido Star, Last Exile, Chrono Crusade, Gantz, Samurai 7, Desert Punk, Gankutsuou, Basilisk, Speed Grapher, Trinity Blood, Welcome to the N.H.K., Witchblade, Kaze no Stigma, Pumpkin Scissors, Romeo x Juliet, Bokurano, Seto no Hanayome (partly), and The Tower of Druaga.

Lol, probably better not responding to troll post.

Beside saying that, I enjoy and like a lot of gonzo series. While I wouldn't call it an acquired taste but when they attempt original work it has always been interesting and more fulfilling than most original production as current. This is the Gonzo I would love to see more.

TJR wrote:

Anyway, Gonzo haters are as varied as they come. Some despise them for not paying enough attention to the otaku market. Others think they ruin adaptations.

Lol, this probably one of the main reasons or at least where most of the nerd rage comes from. Although lots of studio have poor adaptation but it just seems like Gonzo is the only studio where it even slight changes are overblown.

MorwenLaicoriel wrote:

So yeah, they're not all bad, they've done some good work...but they've had a ton of missteps, too

I still think its being overblown, Like you can list some terrible Gonzo series but there are not many that falls under that category while some have a love or hate relationship e.g. Romeo X Juliet. Most probably fall under mediocre but rather their terrible series are just really bad although people forget that madhouse was the production staff in charge princess ressurection and we have Munto which well ... I'm sure people deny its existent so Kyoto anime can shine in a good light for years to come.

Cool about time they make a come back

Charred Knight wrote:

kuriousity wrote:

I'm always surprised to see so much negativity towards GONZO shows - I always associate the name with the cream of the crop when it comes to anime. Maybe I've just been lucky to get all the gems over the years, to no complaints from me though - great stuff! Good to see them making some profit and working on new projects.

I just think people remember the really bad GONZO shows instead of remembering the good ones. While Gonzo has definitely not had a particularly great record like Bones and Sunrise has had, I would say their record was decent about 50-50.

They were my favourite studio at one point, and they always had "haters" like 6hokage. One of the problems was that they were one of if not the most prolific studio in terms of yearly title output and their budget wasn't spead evenly, so while they produced some gems they also churned out a lot of lesser stuff too - and towards the end the average quality seemed to drop drastically; Strike Witches was a great success but it came along around the same time as a lot of stuff I gave up on after an episode like Blassreiter, Linebarrels, Dragonaut... there was also Shangri-la which I watched through to the end but could have been a lot better than it was and ended up a commercial failure.

Good for them...just please don't let them touch the next Blazblue game

Well, that gives me some hope that they'll be around to make the second season of Saki whenever the manga-ka finishes up the Nationals.

Shenl742 wrote:

Good for them...just please don't let them touch the next Blazblue game

Without a very large budget its going to suck regardless due to its shounen fighter type animation. I rather not see Gonzo handle it since Blazblue looks like huge gamble to animate for any anime studio.

zaeris wrote:

Shenl742 wrote:

Good for them...just please don't let them touch the next Blazblue game

Without a very large budget its going to suck regardless due to its shounen fighter type animation. I rather not see Gonzo handle it since Blazblue looks like huge gamble to animate for any anime studio.

I wasn't talking about the hypothetical anime adaptation, I was talking about the in-game cutscenes that Gonzo did for Continuum Shift, which were horribly animated and off-model.

What I mean is that when the third game comes around, I hope Arc System works gets someone else to do the movies.

kuriousity wrote:

I'm always surprised to see so much negativity towards GONZO shows - I always associate the name with the cream of the crop when it comes to anime. Maybe I've just been lucky to get all the gems over the years, to no complaints from me though - great stuff! Good to see them making some profit and working on new projects.

Yes Dragonaught was such a incredible show.

spoiler[For how bad it was.]

Quote:

I just think people remember the really bad GONZO shows instead of remembering the good ones. While Gonzo has definitely not had a particularly great record like Bones and Sunrise has had, I would say their record was decent about 50-50.

Change that to 75-25 (75 being bad) than I would agree.

Quote:

I wasn't talking about the hypothetical anime adaptation, I was talking about the in-game cutscenes that Gonzo did for Continuum Shift, which were horribly animated and off-model.

What I mean is that when the third game comes around, I hope Arc System works gets someone else to do the movies.

One of the reasons why Gonzo is horrible to other studios the often animated and off-model animation.

@ZODDGUTS

Quote:

Change that to 75-25 (75 being bad) than I would agree.

lol, well you're quite infamous on hating gonzo..
Here is a list of Gonzo series they've worked on or produce.

company#395

Realistically if you can find your 75% of bad shows you win, although thinking realisticly it is just a few bad shows that people hold an ever lasting grudge against. Most will be deabatable amongst fan and anti-fans.

Megiddo wrote:

Well, that gives me some hope that they'll be around to make the second season of Saki whenever the manga-ka finishes up the Nationals.

Actually, that particular team has already regrouped under a new company, Studio Gokumi. Once again, they're working on a show with the director and chief writer of Saki (and Dragonaut).

http://www.a-ch.jp/movie/index.html

If Square Enix were to greenlight a sequel (Season 1 was a big success for them), they might be best off contracting Gokumi.

NDenizen wrote:

Problem with Gonzo is that they find it very hard to deliver. Last Exile and Gankutsuou were absolutely spot on, and they just lost it from then on.

If you look on Wikipedia or another site that has a time-line of the shows they did, it does seem like a downward spiral after Gankutsuou.

It's also kind of interesting that in 2007 the then(?) president of Gonzo and a producer for the company founded another animation studio called David Production, and while they did a pretty great, if underrated job with The Book of Bantorra, I must credit them for taking Dogs and turning into a mediocre OVA that looked like Bleach on a bad day Laughing

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